Tag: Twin Towers

For those who never knew, the Bush White House received numerous warnings from the counterterrorism desk at the CIA of an imminent attack by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida on the United States. Former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald tells of the still-classified briefs issued to the Bush administration in the months leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

New documents have emerged showing that officials in Washington and New York misrepresented or concealed information that ultimately might have protected thousands of people from the contaminated air at Ground Zero.

Americans gathered at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan and at other sites Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

Seven years into the Soviet Union’s fatal adventure in Afghanistan, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood before the international community in West Berlin and demanded that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall that separated East Germany from the West. (more)

This Thursday, Seven Stories Press will release a 10th anniversary reissue of Noam Chomsky’s book on the World Trade Center attacks titled “9-11: Was There an Alternative?” and TomDispatch has an exclusive excerpt from the new preface. (more)

Documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound indicate that the head of al-Qaida was plotting an attack to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The records contained names of possible operatives, but little else that was useful, according to Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal.

It was partly intended as a tribute to those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, but, considering America’s bellicose response to that tragedy, it’s hard not to read more into the story of the USS New York, a new Navy warship constructed partly from melted-steel remnants of the World Trade Center.

With all the subtlety of a jackhammer, an enterprising right-wing artiste by the name of Mike Meehan has recorded an election-year anthem, “Please Don’t Vote for a Democrat,” and has launched a corresponding PR campaign via the Internet and billboard ads—like this one in noted liberal stronghold Orange County, Florida—in hopes of striking fear and indignation into the hearts of undecided voters.

A two-year study of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse by Purdue University has reaffirmed the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which suggested that the buildings crashed under their own weight after crucial support columns and fireproofing were damaged or destroyed. The research team released an animation of the first plane’s collision to show how heat and flame eventually brought the towers down.